Help Me-Chapter 6, Progressing
by BabyGraceBlue
Summary: What if the cure is worse than the cancer? Scully's POV


"And your hands are really shaking something awful  
As your worries crawl around inside your clothes   
Oh, how long will you been sitting in the darkness?   
Heaven knows" - Crazy Baby by Joan Osbourne   
  
I think my life is finally coming together, becoming the life I've always envisioned. It's taken me so many years, so many heart-breaking years where I've teetered so close to death, just one breath would have pushed me over, but now I've finally reached it. I have my Lizzy, my beautiful baby girl, I have my house, I have my job and, as an added bonus, I have Mulder.   
  
Before, when we first started working together, all I wanted was Mulder. He seemed to be so passionate, so protective, so strong. But over the following years, the illusion fell away, and I saw he was simply obsessed, controlling and stubborn. Somehow, I've been able to accept his faults, as he has mine, and I've tried with everything I have to better him, to right all his wrongs, to make him happy.   
  
And I think its finally working.   
  
I don't see him as much as I used to, not now since I'm working at Quantico, but since the X-Files are closed, he's requesting a transfer to the Behavioral Science Unit here. At first, I wasn't sure if it was the best idea because for a while I was worried about his mental state, but my fears have all been obliterated. Mulder's pulled himself away from the edge and is now better than ever.   
  
Everything's perfect.   
  
A little bit _too_ perfect.   
  
There's a certain tautness in the air, the kind of muted panic that turns footsteps in a hallway ominous and menacing and silence into thousands of stifled screams of agony, where all you can feel is their hot breath on your face. A certain tension that makes you look over your shoulder. My life has always been full of illusions, and I've become accustomed to the feel and appearance of them. And something tells me that this happiness is a illusion.   
  
It's sad, really. When I finally become content in life, I become overly paranoid. I suppose I'm used to anguish and silent tears to the point where its all I know. Sad.   
  
I pull my legs up into my chest and rest my head on the arm of the couch. I glance out the window in anticipation of Mulder. He's late. Again. I sigh, and turn my head to check Lizzy. She's still in "her" chair, the only piece of furniture I saved from my old apartment, the chair where I saw my Ahab that night. I close my eyes at the memory. So many deaths...   
  
I'm jolted out of my reflection by a sudden and intense pain in the back of my neck. I instantly move my hand there, thinking it was perhaps an insect, like a mosquito or bee. I feel a slight wetness on my fingers. I draw my hand away victoriously, believing I have killed the annoying bug. I hold my hand out in front of me and gasp. It's blood. _MY_ blood. I hurry to the mirror, turn around and pull my hear of my neck. On the center of the back of me neck, bright red against my pale skin, is a perfect circle of blood, the size of a pinprick. I hastily wipe the blood away. What could have caused that? Then I realize. My necklace. The clasp of my necklace must have cut me somehow, I reassure myself. However, I don't believe that at all. There are two sharp knock at the door, and I hurry to answer it, fixing my hair as I go. I open the door cautiously. It's Mulder.   
  
"Oh, it's just you," I say distracted, moving away from the door back to the couch and I start to slowly wake Lizzy.   
  
"Hey, nice to see you too," Mulder chuckles as he hangs up his coat and goes into the kitchen to get something to drink like he does every day, and his bright mood annoys me. I glance down at Lizzy and notice my hands are shaking. Lizzy slowly wakes, peering up at me curiously through sleepy and half-closed eyes. I smile tenderly and shakily at her, and pull her into my lap. She rests her small head on my chest, slipping back in a light sleep.   
  
"What's the matter, Scully?" Mulder asks, coming through the kitchen doors, popping upon a can of soda. His sudden voice startles me and I jump.   
  
"Nothing. I'm fine, Mulder," I reply, my eyes adverted to me feet, knowing that he knew that I was lying. Mulder says nothing and for a while he just stands there and regards me carefully. Then he leans over, and without a word, scoops Lizzy into his arms in one motion, carries her to her rooms without waking her, lays her down, goes to the kitchen and brings out a cup of coffee. I look at the cup. From Dunkin Donuts. He must have bought it for me on the way home.   
  
"Now, Scully," he says tenderly, cupping my face with his now gentle hands and making me face him, "What's the matter?" I look up into his eyes and I realize that no lying or excuses will get me out of this one.   
  
"It's nothing, really," I say, trying to make my voice confident and self-assured. "Just that everything's so perfect, and I have this nagging notion in the back of my head that something bad is coming." It's the truth. Not the whole truth, but its still the truth.   
  
He smiles kindly at me, and I realize he knows that I'm keeping something from him. "Now you know how I always feel," he jokes.   
  
I smile graciously at him, relieved he deiced not to question me any future. I move away from him slightly, shattering the intimacy on purpose. I need space. I can tell Mulder is disappointed and a little discouraged, and I feel sorry but I just need space.   
  
"Hey, you never told me about that dream, you know," I say lightly, trying to pass off my intense curiosity about his dream as a conversation piece.   
  
"Oh, it was nothing," he says, and now its his turn to turn away be uncomfortable.   
  
"C'mon," I edge him on. "It was pretty bad the night you called me. He sighs, and shifts on the couch.   
  
Finally, he turns to me. "Everything and everyone was on fire. Except me."   
  
"Fire?" I ask, aware of his intense phobia of fire. "Yeah. Everyone. _Everyone_" he stresses, but his implication is lost to me.   
  
"I wonder why Lizzy had that dream. I don't think she's as afraid of fire as you are," I muse, glancing off in the direction of her room.   
  
He sighs, annoyed. "It's not about fire," he replies testily. "We both saw the same people on fire. People she doesn't even know. My sister, my father..." he trails off and then stares into my eyes. "You."   
  
"Me?" I question meekly, my voice trembling at the intensity in his eyes.   
  
"Yeah," he confirms, looking away and out the window. "And her too. But not me."   
  
I take a deep breath, trying to slow my racing heart and calm my pounding head. I unconsciously reach up and rub the back of my neck, and Mulder catches the action. He narrows his eyebrows in confusion, and I limply drop my arm to my side.   
  
"I'm sorry," I manage. "I know you didn't want to think about it."   
  
"No, it's okay. I'm glad to finally get it off my chest", he replies, and gets to his feet and goes to the kitchen for something else to drink. I watch him go tiredly. There's a slight bounce in his step. He's given me the burden of his dream and all its horrible implications.   
  
I take a sip from my untouched and yet still hot coffee, trying to figure out what his subconscious is trying to tell him when I suddenly feel it again. That intense pain.   
  
Except this time it isn't as short as it was before, not by a long shot, and is now at the base of my spine. My hand falters, and I spill the contents of the cup onto my bare leg, burning me. I cry out at the combined pain, but I can make no motion to get the coffee off of me, almost as if I'm paralyzed. And in this moment of pain and confusion, one clear fact sends spasms of fear throughout my body: There is something inside me.   
  
Whatever the source of the pain is, its moving around inside me, one second brushing up against my skin, the next second, touching a nerve. The pain subsides, but I can still feel whatever it is making its way around in my body, slowly, so incredibly slowly. Mulder runs to me, and Lizzy starts to cry at the sound of my cry, and Mulder's in front of me, face frantic and worried and he's asking me something, but I can't hear him. All I can hear are my baby's cries, but I'm frozen in fear and I feel like tearing at my skin, and ripping this thing out of me. Suddenly, the world begins to spin and turn to black, and I mutter one thing, two simple words before I slip into unconsciousness.   
  
"Help me."   
  
  
  



End file.
